Purple Strategies is playing both sides of the Donald Trump divide.
The bipartisan firm, run by Democrats and Republican operatives, is a full-service political shop that produces campaign advertisements, employs lobbyists, and provides crisis communication consultation to candidates and corporate clients.
Alex Castellanos, a co-founding partner of Purple Strategies, is advising the largest pro-Trump Super PAC.
Rory Cooper, a managing director at Purple Strategies, is serving as the spokesperson and advisor for the Never Trump project of the Never Means Never PAC.
It’s not the first time Purple Strategies has taken on conflicting clients battling over a controversial subject. As we previously reported, Purple Strategies officials provided work for the National Rifle Association while simultaneously providing work for leading gun control groups.
But this would appear to be a special case of the firm’s ability to reconcile what would normally be considered irreconcilable differences.
Over the last eight years, the team at Alexandria, Virginia-based Purple Strategies has gained a record of working for clients under a storm of negative attention, notably rebranding BP and controlling fallout from the company’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Purple Strategies did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
The firm was founded in 2008 by Castellanos, the former advertising strategist for George W. Bush, and by Steve McMahon, former advisor to the Democratic National Committee under Chairman Howard Dean. Purple Strategies now employs a large stable of political consultants from both sides of aisle, including former officials with the DCCC, former journalists, and current Lt. Gov. Tim Griffin, R-Ark.
Castellanos, a CNN commentator, was until recently an outspoken critic of Trump, pillorying the real estate tycoon as an autocratic “strongman.” But now he has made a political U-turn, cutting advertisements and advising Rebuilding America Now, one of several Super PACs recently formed to support Trump. Last week, Rebuilding America Now announced that it has $32 million in committed funds and began the very first general election television commercial supporting Trump’s election bid. The spot depicts both Bill and Hillary Clinton as dishonest, editing together a statement about the use of a private email server.
“My choice is now binary. Either I support her, or I support him,” Castellanos told the New York Times. “And the certainty of more of the same in Hillary Clinton is much more dangerous to this country than the uncertainty and disruptive change of Donald Trump.”
Campaign finance filings show that Rebuilding America Now is using Cold Harbor Films, the in-house production company of National Media, part of the family of firms run out of Purple Strategies’ Alexandria office complex and owned by Purple Strategies’ founding partners, including Castellanos. Cold Harbor Films produced the firm’s advertisements for BP, as well as for a lobbying group representing the drug industry and the Republican-led House Ways and Means Committee.
Rory Cooper, formerly a congressional aide, has spent the last several months as the spokesperson and senior advisor to the Never Trump project, formed to block Trump from winning the Republican nomination. (Pierre Omidyar, the founder of The Intercept’s parent company, First Look Media, donated $100,000 to the Never Means Never PAC that funds the project.)
The group spent about $200,000 in independent expenditures against Trump during the primaries, but made little impact on the election results.
After Trump effectively won his party’s nomination following his win in the Indiana primary, Cooper’s Never Trump group recast its mission. Cooper, who did not respond to multiple requests for comment from The Intercept, told RealClearPolitics reporter Caitlin Huey-Burns that his group will now seek to diminish the impact of Trump’s role within the Republican Party. “We don’t want the party to become an echo chamber of his beliefs,” Cooper said.
Purple Strategies proudly touts its mission as providing clients with “perspective and experience from both sides — even if they don’t always like it.”
Top photo: Alex Castellanos in 2007.
Most of the commentors here missed the point of the article. The point is that there is no substantial difference between Clinton and Trump as far as the financial industry is concerned, which means that they will make substantially the same economic decisions. It’s not about whether it’s ethical to play both sides of the fence in this regard.
Thank you for this piece Lee. This would never make it on the national media circuit.
We should pass this article on to all our social media contacts to show that neither proposed candidate, HC or DT should receive any of our votes in the national election this fall.
I will write in Jill Stein if Bernie comes even close to endorsing HC.
Omidyar also helped fund NationBuilder, a software platform used by the biggest conservative groups in the country… he plays the game too, Lee.
Was the point of this article is to take Purple Strategies’ mission statement and expand it into sixteen paragraph? Or is it an advertisement for them? We need more bi- and non-partisan companies like PS in this country.
Divide and Conquer
This kind of indoctrination starts at the high school debate club. Students are supposed to learn to argue whatever side of an issue they are given. Supposedly this is about letting them see both sides of an issue, but coincidentally it also accustoms them to the idea of being dogs for a master. More to the point, it gets them accustomed to the idea of forgetting and losing any inconvenient bits of evidence that would harm their side – a habit that will serve them well in adult life, whether as defense attorneys or prosecutors.
Hypocrisy rules Life under King Henry viii was not any different. At some point, you would be ostresized or burned if you were not catholic (were reformist) or were catholic (not reformist).
It only makes sense to play both sides of the fence. This method of hypocrisy provides one with double income and a defence.
When the elected people in power do anything for money, dont be surprised that other people tag along. It’s not just a disease, it’s a way of life that has encircled the economy of America and if you do not participate in this, you won’t count.
I honestly can’t see why anyone would find this even a little bit surprising. Nor does it seem to me inconsistent with the values that predominate in our political and economic systems: Does anyone know of a retailer that wouldn’t happily sell Tide and Ivory Snow* simultaneously?
After all, it’s not as though Clinton and Trump are exemplars of radically different ideologies (if that mattered to the hustlers promoting them).
*Tide or Ivory Snow
Maybe this explains why Donald Trump is trying
to help elect Hillary Clinton.
They are friends from the same clubhouse.
Agreed. The amount of Republicans outspokenly supporting Hillary should seriously alarm any sincere progressive (alerting them to her authoritarian, pro-elite reality), but Democrats don’t seem to care how dangerously corporatist, imperialist and warmongering she is.
Trump was never meant to win – he’s just there to have higher unfavorable ratings than her!!!
Thus the establishment ushers in someone who could very easily stumble into much more corporate-driven war, someone whose vicious and greedy temperament doesn’t even allow her to embody Obama’s narcissistic trait of wanting to mitigate his vile militarism with a calculated appearance of diplomacy.
It’s kinda brilliant, you have to admit. It’s not like it was easy finding a candidate with higher unfavorables.
This actually proves that Debbie Wasserman Schultz is a political operative of unparalleled genius.
Yes, sadly, it is quite brilliant. It’s working phenomenally well, damn it.
To me, the worst aspect of this (and previous) elections
is that the voters reinforce the underlying sadistic cynicism
every time they fearfully and arrogantly cling to
the “candidates” proffered by their corporate masters.
I have little reason to doubt that the corporate masters of the
faking U$A get pleasure from watching their manipulated
servants desperately cling to “candidates” who are going to
make matters worse for the majority of the voters who
support them –
as well as the rest of humanity and the environment –
for the perversely delicious delights of accumulating
and withdrawing more money from the voters and
the rest of humanity.
The BP case is a good example of how the American public will continue to be screwed over by corporate Wall Street interests regardless of which candidate is (s)elected in November. Purple Strategies, ChemRisk (a fake science outfit), and BP all coordinated to lobby both Democrats and Republicans to protect BP profit margins at the expense of the victims of BP’s criminal negligence:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cherri-foytlin/chemrisk-bp-and-purple-st_b_4095131.html
Consider one of the operatives involved in promoting BP & ChemRisk “science”:
As far as the claim by the Purple Strategies partner that “either I support him, or I support her”, there is a third approach – namely political action aimed at limiting the power of the executive branch of government and Presidential power in particular, to reduce the damage that either of these horrible candidates can do once in office.
How about this for an ad program:
“Given a choice between two widely despised political candidates for President, one running on a platform of race-baiting intolerance and hatred for immigrants and Muslims (Trump), and the other a shady two-faced political operative whose claimed policy positions cannot be trusted (Clinton), what can the American public do? Either one of these candidates will be a disaster for the United States, both domestically and internationally.”
“We urge you to lobby your Congressmembers to take steps to roll back the unConstitutional increases in the power and authority of the President, relative to the judicial and legislative branches, that took place under the GW Bush Administration and that have been perpetuated by the Obama Administration.”
“Some of these powers include launching military assaults on foreign countries without explicit Congressional approval, the targeting of various minority groups inside the United States by federal agencies, the diversion of money that should go to states for infrastructure programs into international ‘regime change’ projects and foreign military spending, etc.”
Suggested slogan: Trump/Clinton 2016? Just Say Lame Duck.
i like your ideas.
How about changing from an executive system to a parliamentary one? That would substantially limit the power of whoever becomes president. As much as I hate these two, it’s more about limiting the power of a single individual (presidential decisions are far less representative than congressional ones, absolute power corrupts absolutely, etc.) than about who’s in the White House.
Started laughing at “Never Means Never PAC” — goddamnit that is childish. Wonder what Pierre Omidyar thinks of Purple Strategy? Would he still give money?
And re II comment below: I prefer multi dimensional tic tac toe, it’s so fun. One day may america be really great again by bringing the gameboards back to family fun night, connect four, maybe even a little battle ship.
Purple Strategies seems to have capitalized on the synergy of working for both sides. A firm which worked only for the Democrats would have to spend a lot of time and energy trying to anticipate the Republican strategy. At Purple Strategies, you simply holler to guy in the next office, “How are the Republicans going to respond to this attack?”
The campaigns are equally delighted at how deftly Purple Strategy anticipates the tactics of the opposition. It is almost as if they are playing 10 dimensional chess, always knowing in advance what the next move will be. In addition, no campaign wants to take too big a lead – and see their supporters become overly complacent – or fall too far behind – and see their supporters become demoralized. Purple Strategies seems to always manage to keep things on an even keel, never allowing one party to strike a knock-out blow.
This article reaffirms my faith that Washington is not a dysfunctional entity as it is so often portrayed.
The firm is paid to provide services. I do not see how taking one sides is relevant.
Sure, in the radical free-market capitalist model, all that matters is the profit margin. The firm is paid to provide [X], nothing else is relevant. X can be anything – human organs harvested from the third world, chemical weapons, child prostitutes, dishonest propaganda, addictive opiates, whatever will earn a profit.
In this case, it’s like an arms dealer selling weapons to both sides in a conflict in order to maximize profits; and just think of the increased business opportunities – “Our intel is that your enemy just bought some tanks, don’t you want to buy some anti-tank missiles?”
And of course to sell to all sides, you want to bring onboard members of all sides. This was also seen in the 2008 mortgage-sales business; brokers hired con artists of all racial groups to sell adjustable rate mortgages to their appropriate group; send a white woman to sell a shady loan to white women, reward her with a big commission, same for Asian, Latino, or black prospective buyers.
This is nothing new, this has been a common theme in American society for a very long time:
http://www.columbia.edu/~lnp3/mydocs/culture/confidence_man.htm
You have to be trying really hard not to see the issue here. Bravo.
The only morality in capitalism is profit. I just don’t see much difference in the way this business operates compared to, say, Pfizer.
Purple is the color of Royalty.
Is Red vs. Blue just divide and conquer portrayed as democracy?
It’s nice to know that the pinnacle of our socio-economic landscape lives in such harmony. What are the chances of that trickling down?
I believe you are correct. Red + Blue = Purple.
Those who focus on the details see only the binary perspective. A more comprehensive view from the pinnacle, as seen by experienced lobbying firms, reveals the underlying synthesis.
People without a conscience will always take your money! Why, it’s like Alex Castellanos is a banker!
good observation.
ol’ lloyd is number 1 at playing both sides of many fences;
american and unamerican
legal and illegal
victor and victim
pro and con
benefactor and thief
advisor and advisee
heaven and hell